King: Black Kentucky judge is right to toss out all-white juries to seek fairness

Judge Olu Stevens wants every defendant who comes before his bench to have a fair trial. (Judge Olu Stevens via Facebook)

In 2009, the city of Louisville, Ky. had no African-American judges on the county circuit or district court until Olu Stevens, a successful attorney, was appointed to the system by then-Gov. Steve Beshear. Judge Stephens quickly developed a reputation for being firm but fair, efficient, but never careless.

Since 2009, 147 cases came across his desk. In those 147 cases, in just two different instances, Judge Stevens instructed the court to form a new jury panel. A jury panel is randomly formed by electronic systems and typically consist of a pool of 42 potential jurors. From that pool, the final jury of 12 jurors and three alternates are chosen.

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Twenty-two percent of the 741,000 Louisville residents are black, but in the 147 cases that Judge Stevens tried, in two instances, the randomly selected jury pool came back with 41 of 42 potential jurors as white. In each of those cases, defense attorneys made a motion to Judge Stevens to strike the jury panel and to bring a new one since it was unfair for the African-American defendants to be denied a true jury of their peers. Judge Stevens sustained each of those two motions.

In one case, the new jury was formed, it was still overwhelmingly white but had moderate diversity, and it still found the man guilty. He is currently incarcerated. In another case, and this one is at the center of today's controversy, Judge Stevens sustained the motion to strike a jury panel with 41 of potential 42 jurors coming back as white. Like in the previous case, defense attorneys believed their defendant, a black man, deserved a pool of jurors more representative of Louisville.

Judge Stevens sustained the motion, the jury panel was struck, and a new one was formed. This time, out of 42 potential jurors, four were black. Mind you, for it to be truly representative of Louisville, nine jurors would need to come back as black. Judge Stevens and the attorneys accepted this new panel. The final jury was still majority white, but the man was found not guilty.

This clearly infuriated the primary prosecutor of Louisville, called the Commonwealth's Attorney, Thomas Wine.

Wine motioned to the State Supreme Court to have Judge Stevens removed from the bench and recused from all criminal cases on the basis that the current system of selecting jurors is legal and that Judge Stevens does not have the right to strike an all-white jury down if it was legally formed.

Wine's office claims that Stevens has disqualified himself to fairly judge by writing about the contentious issue in a series of posts on Facebook. Judge Stevens, and his legal advisors, feel very strongly that this case has nothing to do with what he has posted on social media, but everything to do with a combination of race, racism, and his willingness to strike those juries.

In an interview with the New York Daily News, prominent Louisville defense attorney Aubrey Williams, a black man, stated emphatically that he believes race and racism were at play in the move to have Judge Stevens recused.

"A few years ago white people here were talking about how Judge Stevens could one day be a Supreme Court Justice. Whites here in Louisville used to talk about how I could be mayor. What Judge Stevens and I both found out, the hard way, was that if we ever made a decision that honored the reality of our blackness, hellfire and brimstone is liable to come down. This isn't just about this case. He's a judge, his wife is a doctor, they live in a multi-million dollar home, and people around here aren't used to black people in power, with wealth, making decisions on their own."

Louisville City Councilwoman Jessica Green, one of six black representatives on a 26-member council, echoed these sentiments. She served as a prosecutor in the Commonwealth Attorney's office for years and sees both race and racism at play.

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"I tried 52 cases in Kentucky," Green said. "Not once did we even have four black jurors in a case. The more established I got as a prosecutor, other attorneys began openly communicating how badly they wanted black jurors off of panels. This isn't a secret. Any honest former prosecutor will tell you they've seen this around here. While most prosecutors are fair, many seek to unfairly remove black jurors."

What we are getting down to here is what it truly means for a defendant to have their constitutionally granted "jury of your peers." Consistently, for white defendants, this means a jury that is either exclusively white or close to it. For African-Americans, it means something altogether different.

Are we really pretending that race and culture have zero implications with how people see the world? Consistently, time and time again, studies show that race, and corresponding culture, impact how juries perform. Of course, people don't see the world differently because they have a certain skin down. That's dumb. But what we absolutely have to admit is that when you are black in America, your lived experiences and life lessons shape you in serious, measurable ways.

As I look at this case, and evaluate Judge Stevens, he makes me proud. He wants every defendant who comes before his bench to have a fair trial and he is absolutely right to strike all-white juries down in the name of fairness.

African-American defendants deserve true juries of their peers that are, at the very least, racially representative of the city. He's not soft on crime and he's certainly not soft on African-Americans out of some hidden racial loyalty. This, though, should not mean that he is forced to ignore the reality of racism and the continued role race plays in America. That's preposterous.